Book Hippo

Saturday, January 9, 2016

The Children's Chocolate Bar Strike

It was 1947. The war was over and costs that had been held down by the war were zooming up. A chocolate bar in Canada was five cents. But cost of sugar etc was up. So the chocolate companies decided to raise the price to eight cents.
A boy went down to get a bar and noticed the price. He complained and soon he and some friends were on a picket line outside the shop.
The idea caught on. More and more boys and girls showed up to picket the high price of chocolate. Newspapers zeroed in on the children and the children's chocolate strike was born.
It was country-wide and looked on with some amusement by the adults. The chocolate companies tried to reason with the kids. Tried to tell them about soaring costs of making the candy. Kids didn't listen.
Then, on the eve of the biggest strike that was to hit Canada, a telephone call came it.
The children, it said, are being used by the communists to derail the capitalist economy. No one knows who made the call.
Overnight parents forbade their children to strike, fearing their sons and daughters were pawns of communist sympathizers. It was over as quick and as sudden as it began. The price of chocolate held at eight cents and now is about two dollars.
But oh, those were interesting times.